Listen now:
Our guest on the Faculty Factory podcast this week is Darshana Shah, PhD. Dr. Shah is Professor of Pathology, and Associate Dean, Office for Faculty Advancement at the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington, W.Va.
She is also the founding editor-in-chief of the Marshall Journal of Medicine. Learn more.
Transcription
Please note this transcription may contain computer-generated mistranslations
Kim: Welcome back to the “Faculty Factory Podcast.” On today’s episode, we have Dr. Darshana Shah from Marshall University in West Virginia. Hi, Darshana. Thanks for calling in today. So why don’t you tell everybody all your titles?
Darshana: Hi, Kim. Thank you. So I’m Darshana Shah. I’m professor of pathology and Associate Dean for faculty advancement at Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in West Virginia. I also have another title I wear, which is I’m also founding editor-in-chief for our “Marshall Journal of Medicine.” It’s an open access academic journal.
Kim: Wow, that’s fantastic. I remember you starting that process a while ago and that was quite a huge lift. So congratulations on that journal.
Darshana: Thank you.
Kim: How did you get into faculty development? You know, a few people have already chimed in on the Faculty Factory website saying this series of podcast has been so helpful because they’re new to the field and they’re really enjoying hearing how people got into faculty affairs and faculty DevOps. So how did your career get you here?
Darshana: So for me it was serendipity all the way. I think when I did my PhD, I don’t think I had a goal of becoming a passionate faculty development person. But as a PhD in biomedical science, I joined Marshall University Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow in the department of pathology in early ’90s. And as a young researcher and a young mother of two, I was actually juggling my valuable role at home and also learning to be an independent researcher in the lab at work. But I guess life had something else in store for me. So in my professional life, my pathology chairman who recruited me as a postdoc, he had to step down. Our course director of pathology was on medical leave, and I was asked to fill in temporarily.
At home front, my mother-in-law got diagnosed with breast cancer at age 59 and we were taking care of at home. And if you’re a little bit familiar with Indian culture, lot of the things in helping…even though I had a very wonderful father-in-law, but it is a woman role. So I helped mom cope up with everything she went through. So here I am in a larger classroom of life, needed faculty or personal development in several areas. I needed help or professional development in managing change, how to be a good teacher, because now I’m putting a separate role. Then how do I maintain my research footprint? Because remember, I was just starting out in the postdoc. Then you’re not so much in the lab. How do I actually get there to get a little of or own a title of professor someday? How do I be a good mom, wife, daughter-in-law? There are so many. How do I do that? So those are the stuff I felt that I needed in those days as the faculty development.
But I guess most of us who are in this field are becoming that real, that was not a pathologist, I also learned in those days that I had to work and organize the course in such a way that if I understand my second year medical student, then…if I understand, they will understand. And that’s where I see my PhD training come in. And I think one would say that your PhD was in biomedical science, but I think now, when I think back it is basically PhDs and the problem solving attitude. So had designed a new course and design essentially just a baby would set up an experiment, what worked, what didn’t work, how I can take it to the next level and why it didn’t work. So you always had the question why.
So in 2004 as running as a course director, which was, remember, it was temporary, but I became sort of 10 years temporary to doing the same thing over 10 years. And I started an Academy of Medical Educator with a small community grant because I also learned that students were very happy with the course. And then, of course, you have to build, to continue with our faculty who delivers this, build our Academy of Medical Educator in 2004, we’re a big school habit, but Marshall, of course, did not have something like that. So I wrote a small community grant, then started the Academy. But the goal was different, not recognize excellence, but build excellence in teaching. So that was our goal at that time.
And that landed me in 2005, I became an Assistant Dean of Faculty Development in Medical Education. That’s how I came to the dean’s office. And today, almost decade and a half later, I enjoy building platform of whether it is an academy or now, of course, it’s a journal for folks to pursue excellence in any area of their interest. And I love watching them take off from the platform I built. And I also feel that most of us who are in this area of faculty development, I think you may agree that what drives this is the success of others. I think that’s how my journey so far to the dean’s office and loving every bit of it, that I get to pursue my passion. I have a purpose and a platform to do that.
Kim: Yeah, you’re right. Everybody has a heart of service for our faculty members. In our faculty development academic affairs family, it’s definitely the thread that binds us together. We definitely have a servant leadership tendencies. Could you describe your faculty development office for us? Everybody likes to kind of compare how their offices look to others. So in terms of approximate number of staff who’s doing what just so we get a flavor for depth and breadth of our offices.
Darshana: Sure. So just a little bit of background for our schools, we are community-based medical school. We are located in the heart of rural Appalachia. Our size of the school is probably…you know, the size of the faculty, I have about 330 faculty and we do have lot of community-based preceptor help us. So in this office right now, I have one full FTE who support in organizing the program and things that we deliver. But at the same time, I think whenever you come from a small place, a small town, the collegiality between other administrative office are great. So our HR office is a practice plan. I do interact with them regularly. And now my office is actually plays under clinical affair, which I think is helpful because I get to meet and I get to know people.
So full time, in a way, it’s one, and then I’m point A desk to E, but then I reach out to these folks that our chart is designed, that we get to work with our diversity office who is of course next to my office, the way we’re located, and they have a person who we actually share a lot of our effort. So synergizing with different offices is the biggest resource. But to answer your question shortly, yeah, it’s 1.8 FTE to take support of the 300 faculty. But if you look at in that number, oh, my gosh, it’s not that much because you do have other people doing…we’re just aligning. And that’s how I think over the years I’ve learned, and that’s how we run our office here.
Kim: That one FTE, is that a staff person?
Darshana: It’s a staff, full time staff. Yeah.
Kim: Administrative or program evaluation or analyst or a combination?
Darshana: So nothing. It’s just the administrative staff but she is, again, very tech savvy. So a lot of things, what she helps us with the data collection. Then we also have sort of our clinic, which one can actually analyze the data. It doesn’t reside under this office but our research folks have, which will actually help us out analyze any data. And as a faculty member, I take an advantage of stuff like that also.
Kim: Sure. Now, you mentioned that you work with your HR office, can you just give us a snapshot of what kinds of programming or what they do for you in your role in faculty development?
Darshana: So I report to our Vice Dean of Clinical Affair. And I think over the years this position has been shifted. And now I think…before I think…and of course, the school has gone through transition and lot of schools broadly have changed in leadership. So my Vice Dean of Clinical Affair whom I meet on a regular basis, actually, we have a monthly meeting, but that is just on the calendar year. But other than that, I still meet with him whenever there is a need, if I arrive. So for our HR, also looks after our practice plan. So our CFO would meet the new faculty and I meet the new faculty when they come on board. I’m not involved that much in recruitment because retention is my responsibility as a faculty development person. So even like a launching onboarding. So we basically look at what each other does, and then try to…I take the academic component and I take care of that part.
Helping out organizing event, they will help us out that. Any numbers, data collection, they help me out with that. So this is how, I think, you know, with the Faculty Affairs, even though the office name has changed in advancement, but a lot of policies and things like that. And we also have HRs equipped with the legal. See, if I have some questions regarding that, then they are there to help me out. So it doesn’t fit under one umbrella of faculty advancement. But the we way we work with the clinical affair, I have access to lot of resources they have.
Kim: Gotcha. Yeah, at Hopkins, we have an HR office, of course, but they don’t deal with faculty. But we have a step-sister arm of HR called Talent Management and Organization Development. And they, in fact, do conduct programs. They do workshops and seminars and a whole host of staff and faculty development. But the challenge for us has been they came out of a model where they’d offer half day or full day sessions on, you know, communicating or negotiating or having difficult conversations and speaking like a professional. And so you can imagine for our medicine faculty, they don’t have a half a day or full day to sit in these seminars.
So we try to work really closely with our organization development unit to where we can have them pop over and do some speaking professionally, some kind of one-off sessions. But we’ve really had to take the bull by the horns in our office because our faculty just simply, you know, they can’t do it there, and frankly, insulted when they get these emails from our organization development output, saying, “Come to the time management seminar. It’s four hours long.” And they’re, “Are you crazy?” So I’m always curious how other folks have partnerships with HR or other units in terms of sharing faculty development programming.
Darshana: I’m going to respond in like two steps. So one is that because of the size of our faculty and the size of our institution, and also where we are located, right, so we are in rural part of Appalachian. So even the folks which are recruited here, I would say they are different heart and the soul of those individuals, because they really want to come and make changes here in rural West Virginia. But as far as faculty development, so we have a sort of a PR person. And generally, whenever we make any announcement, she keeps sort of a calendar. So I would not hold anything when something else is happening in the school. So we are all aligned that way on our calendar.
And we also have a dean of staff, which is apart from my direct report to my vice dean. We also have a dean of staff. So we generally, once a month, we share what’s going on in your division or department or whatever. And then we try to not use those time slots because here they are the only faculty we’re trying to pull in so many different direction, right, research, or personal development, or whichever way. So one is that, that we bring in alignment. Second is, I think, at least I can speak for the way I have been doing faculty development, as I said, doing it for almost 15-plus years, we always had this need assessment. And I’m sure every office does that every other year or every two years, I have stopped doing that anonymous. There is no longer anonymous survey.
So we’re just offering time management to the general population, we offer stuff, and I share those data if we have this over since my office is within the clinical affair. So I think those kind of things is very, very helpful. So my office will also conduct an exit interview and now we’re starting a stay interview. All this data I share with my clinical affair folks so we can use this proactively and work together. So on a big picture, I think more units and more divisions are created. I think people get less and less alignment. At least at small places like Marshall, we don’t have to worry about that because we all wear these multiple hats. I hope I answered your question appropriately.
Kim: Yeah, you’ve answered it. That’s perfect. And you said something that I’ve read a little bit about, I’m interested. And I’ll kind of put it in the back here for a second because I’m wondering if you would tell us what you want to talk about today, something unique or something different, something you’re excited about, or something innovative. You did mention the stay interview, and I’ve read a little bit about that. But I’m still curious. I was hoping I’d be one of the interesting things you want to talk to us about. But please share with us. We’re always wanting to hear new ideas and what’s exciting you down there at Marshall.
Darshana: Sure. Again, going back to the traditional faculty development, and I’m sure we all are familiar with it, right? So we often, as you mentioned, our unit is treated as a service-oriented entity. And then, you know, it sort of as an end rather than a means to accomplish important goal and within the mission of our school. And faculty developer like me, if we are good at facilitating or conducting workshop, we really offer session focused on the personal mastery whether it’s research or educator or clinical care, right? So we’ve been running the show for a long time in that way. But I think, today, I feel that position of faculty developer demand vision. So we’ve done exit interview, like, “Oh, so what went wrong? What we can do to improve?” But the stay interview, I felt just the way I think, since I also teach medical students, and we have our evaluation for medical student, which is run by office of medical education. But during my courses, I’ve always asked students to give me feedback right there.
Because if I didn’t make changes with this class, whatever they suggested I did it with a new class, with a new learner, right? So same thing with exit interview, whatever they found, things to improve, they’re already gone. That’s something they perceived. But what about the people who are already here? So that’s kind of a parallel. And I think it always helps because then if I’m a faculty to continue to have in my role, I’m a teacher, too. And so most of them, you look at it, it’s a learner, and whatever I implemented in my courses, I bring that back to my development job. And then I looked at the literature and there’s lot of literature on stay interview. So I think initially the idea came up because we were struggling with our diversity standard. And in rural West Virginia, I mean, if you look at the percentage of it, we have 99.9 Caucasian, right? But if you look at our geographical map or the demographic map of faculty here, people are from all over the world is here.
So I think it is important to find, do a stay interview for them, and also build some data that we are not that bad. I think it’s just that people who have come from outside are very happy here, even for 15-plus years. So that’s why the stay interview came up to come up with some documentation that we may not show you 50% is minority or things in that fashion, but we can show you the people who have come have loved the place. You know, that’s another way to look at. And as a researcher, we are always looking at a multiple way of collecting the data. So I thought this is another way to complement the stay interview with exit and also take a proactive approach and make the changes for people who are already serving our institution rightnow.
Kim: How does that stay interview work? When does that happen?
Darshana: So I think right now, there are a couple of things. And as I said, we’re just rolling that out. So first we thought the survey, but the survey is not…because, you know, most of the survey is qualitative because we want it open-ended. And I will be able to share this little bit maybe later on, because as I said, this was the concept launched and we are trying to figure out. So I have met on one on one. But again, that we need to probably figure this out how Diversity Officer or my office, how we can all come up together to this. In a format, the literature report is that you have to meet on one on one. But right now, we’re just probably targeting our minority faculty. And people from our indicated group is also Appalachian. So we thought we’ll at least let us start with a small number of folks that offer them that would you do the survey open-ended? Would you rather do that or meet with us in person? Because I think most of us in faculty development, you have to give people options.
Kim: So the stay interview, the way you’ve conceived it is in addition to a periodic needs assessment, you called it, or maybe like a faculty satisfaction survey?
Darshana: So we did have a standpoint survey. And standpoint survey actually we did pretty well compared to a lot of other school and the response rate was very good. And we had about almost 60% to 70% are very happy. But we still have to figure out what to do with the 30%, right? And sometimes, I think, those kind of data, unless you really meet, and that standpoint was anonymous. But we’re just trying to figure out a different strategy or different way to collect the information to engage the faculty. And you said, what I’m proud of, so there are a couple of steps. So one is the…and again, this may sound pretty cliché but like, you know, a lot of this word of…so Henry Ford statement of “Anyone who stops learning is old whether at 20s or 80.” So now doing this for a long time, now I’m learning like how to do this whole publishing and the journals. That was something very new because we were not trained to be actually launching a journal. So I think the journal, as you mentioned, yeah, I took the task. And that was something my dean’s idea. The idea was not mine.
But I think at least I had an opportunity to launch it. So 2015, we launched and we finished three years actually, this October. And now I’m applying for different indexing because we launched it not through…via our stage but from a very small, I mean, digital comments of the publisher. And we have about 37,000 downloads from 173 countries. And whenever I have a project like that, again, you wear your faculty affairs hat and you wear your faculty development. So faculty development had this. But being editor-in-chief, I think I have to do lots more stuff on how to review a peer review, you know, to offer those kind of workshop. Also, not only for my institution, but you know, wherever. So I’ve done one in the southern…West Virginia, which is a WVU extended campus. So, you know, wherever there is a need you go ahead and offer at the same time. I also learned that I have to basically tell the P&T committee because I think what is happening is that I’m sure you at your institution being Hopkins, it’s a big stuff on impact factor, journal, right?
Kim: Right.
Darshana: But the open access market is changing that big time. And I mean, Bill Gates and those kind of private foundation are actually going to go…that make it everything open to transparencies is going to be there. So a lot of time, I think I hear that from our GME office and the ACGME needs PubMed ID. And if it’s not PubMed ID, then this journal cannot be counted. And now since I’m going through the process, people forget that the new journal or open access journal, it’s a process of getting indexed. So you take a number. It’s not something that your journal is bad. Of course, you still have to look for the journal which they call it the predatory journals where the fees are at least average of $1,500. I mean, so those things one has to look. But also to have an awareness of what it takes for one to index in PubMed.
And I think it’s become this easy way of screening. So PubMed ID becomes easy when you enter all the information pops up. So I think sometimes I feel that it just like, you know, your SAT score or your MCAT score because it just helps you get the information. You don’t have to worry with taking a large amount. So I think as a faculty affair person, I think I’m also, again, very stressing on how is your peer review. Whatever the journal you go with, what is the ethic policy? Where do they stand by? How does the peer review process is done? So I think those kind of stuff we need to bring back to the policy aspect of it.
I’m also learning now trying to be involved in the team science that how are they placed? What policy do you have? That is no longer in an era of scientific collaboration. Number one author versus number three author. What does that mean? So I think there’s so much work to be done. When new things come up, I think we, as a faculty development person or developer, they really have to be…our job demands us to be not only visionary, but also creative and maybe taking charge at it to bring systematic change by offering, you know, faculty development, not only an individual level, but at [inaudible 00:24:25] or data group level of the organization. And I think those kind of things probably will…something which we can be the agent of change. And so I think I get very much excited. There’s so much to be done in our field.
Kim: Tell us the name of your journal, Darshana.
Darshana: So name of our journal is “Marshall Journal of Medicine.” And our focus…Marshall is, of course, our university, journal of medicine. And we focus on rural health education. So I think our journal is basically serving rural health and Appalachian. But rural is in any part of the world, probably people would be interested.
Kim: That is amazing that you’ve had that many downloads from other countries as well in three short years. That’s great.
Darshana: And we do get submission from everywhere. So it’s not that we get only Marshall submission. Of course there are a lot of stuff in West Virginia, and we have like double blind policy and things like that. So we really stand by the ethical standard for the journal.
Kim: You know, this is such an important work. And, again, I remember when you were doing this, and it’s just nobody can even imagine what it takes to create a journal and that whole process and that whole machine. And as you’ve been talking, it’s just reminded me, my own being so naive about publishing in faculty affairs and faculty development. You know, the number one journal, as we know, in academic medicine is “Academic Medicine.” And so that’s the gold standard that I thought we have to go there for all our publications. And, you know, “Academic Medicine” publishes a lot in education, and it’s a really high rejection rate. It’s a tough journal to get into.
So my background is in gerontology, where most of my publications have been in “The Gerontologist,” “The Journals of Gerontology.” And so I understand how to do large scale epidemiologic research. But when I got into faculty development, I really didn’t know how to do scholarship in this space. And so once I finally got my head around the fact that I needed to start publishing some of these programs that we’ve been doing, I just naively started looking for journals that had something about academic affairs or faculty development and I found “The Journal of Faculty Development.”
So Rusty Carpenter, General Faculty Development. It’s a university somewhere south, and he has been a wonderful editor to work with. I published like two or three articles in “The Journal of Faculty Development.” It sounds like a perfect hit to me. That’s exactly what we’re doing. It’s the only journal of faculty development and, lo and behold, I submitted my materials in December for promotion to professor and the pushback was “The Journal of Faculty Development” isn’t in PubMed. Think about that.
I was looking for an audience of folks who are interested in faculty development. And so that level of naivety and not only among me, an associate dean, but in general, faculty in general, understanding the impact factors of these journals. And then it really…I’m just so embarrassed when I think about that, when my boss said to me, “Where can I find this ‘Journal of Faculty Development’? Is it in PubMed?” And I started looking at that. “Oh, my gosh, it’s not.” I said, “Maybe it’s in PsycLIT or Sociofile, some of the social sciences,” and it’s not. And I, you know, I really got some pushback on that. So I think what you’re saying is really important for the next generation about open access and rethinking alt metrics and other ways of measuring impact.
Darshana: So I think since you brought up this, I’m just going to probably also share it, since right now I’m going through the process of indexing. So yes, our gold standard for us who work in medicine is getting into PubMed and Medline. Because that’s where we can have a lot more people would be looking for. But with open access model, I think that definitely you can google the word and you will have Google Scholar will pick up a lot more things you could probably even find. But I think specialty prefer that it is also they have already got their names made.
So yes, that they would like to probably have a gerontology probably will read…only the gerontologists would read and the epidemiology article would be really great, right? So I understand that. But I think what is happening is the university do not have now the subscription, means model is dying very quickly. And I think for us in West Virginia, we probably have conscious bias people have towards us and our institutions. For example, if it were at Harvard or John Hopkins, if we wrote, it would be different, right? But if somebody is writing for West Virginia, it probably may not be picked up, even though we are at the heart in the disease like obesity, and people study it outside.
But to make the story short, what I wanted to tell that you want people to publish at the high profile journal, but also there are times intimidation kicks in and people don’t want to take it if one or two rejection from the papers, and so our faculty gets discouraged. So I think this is where one I noticed. So before launching the journal, we were offering the program called Aspire. And basically it was a personalized or customized program, whoever wanted to publish. And then that gave birth to the journal. But to give you back the process, so right now PubMed Central is what right now I think I’ll work on or I’m working on. But it is just like submitting a whole…your proposal of this journal is like submitting to “Academic Medicine” or submitting to “Nature” or something like that.
So the application is really, really big to do that. So they look for the technical standard. It means that whatever the metadata field the journal had, it should be able to pick up by any search engine. And the technical standard has certain…and I won’t bore you with lots of detail on that. And the second is ethical standard. So whenever the committee meets, so before even I apply, it’s part of my application, I really have to get this journal indexed into other database. So MGM is already indexing Clocks Particle [SP], WorldCat, ProQuest, Summons, and EBSCO Discovery. It means anybody can access and we also have our DOI on it. So, I mean, it just that the leadership is alluding that even though we are not into PubMed yet, we also have to get an endorsement from some of the ethical agency which are open access scholarly published, or OPSA Association.
We also have to get an endorsement from the Media on Publication Ethics. We also have to get endorsement from World Association of Medical Editors. These are the stuff I had to line up before I even apply for PubMed. Other thing is that journal like ours, so I’m not somewhere in part of the world which people don’t know but, of course, we are right here in a proud country of USA and in West Virginia. But we still launched through the not SAGE or Elsevier, bigger platform, right? So they really have to watch. I couldn’t apply to all this stuff I listed to you until the journal successfully complete minimum two years. So those factors I have to take an account. And I think for me personally, any journal editor, I’m sure they really strive to be the best to meet the gold standard of getting PubMed. And I think that’s where we are all going. But I’m trying to share the journey that these are the things which come in each way.
So if somebody published that and don’t have PubMed ID, I think there’s a lack of awareness for whoever gauged it. And I had somebody calling me from one of the neighboring states that their promotion and tenure does not take any open access and I said, “I have never heard that.” But they must be very much behind what is coming up because I can’t believe that impact, what we all talk about creating an impact. The way we think as journalists serving that somebody in rural part of us which doesn’t have to go to the library to read the article or pay $67 to download the article, they can read about it, right, if they have access to Google. So I think that’s something I feel that we need to probably bring lot more awareness to P&T committee and this old school of thought where the impact is made.
And impact is, again, relative, right? So I think there’s a lot of system-wide issue. It’s not your school or my school, or this P&T or that P&T, but I think it’s the social media like, as you said, all metric and we use Plum Analytic on the journal and Plum gives us exactly where this was discussed. And there is also, if you can download something called Publish and Perish, it’s a free software actually developed in Australia, and I’m right now bringing out the name but happy to share. But if you google this out, you will be able to see that they have developed this. You can say, Google Scholar, or you can say, Crocs or Crocs Rep which gives you the DOI. And then you can write your name and it will actually pull out everything about you, even calculate an age factor for you. So I think those are tools that are very, very powerful. I would dare it, just that I feel that as our role at the faculty affairs and faculty development, we need to do a lot more faculty development for our P&T committees.
Kim: You’re absolutely right. We were undergoing just so many these same conversations at Hopkins when two, three times a year we offer promotion sessions for faculty, how to get promoted to the associate level and how to get promoted to the professor level. And so we have six of these sessions a year. And the past two, three sessions, people are raising hands asking about social media and how does that count to Instagram and Twitter followers and that kind of precedents on social media impact? And, frankly, our committees are really struggling with how do you measure impact in these different methods?
And considering if you have a lot of tweets or retweets, it maybe because of negative feedback. So how do you kind of funnel that out? So it’s a huge issue and you’re right, Darshana. I’d never thought about us thinking about faculty development for P&T committees. But there’s a lot of confusion and misunderstanding that the faculty are pushing one thing and then a lot of the committees are from folks who are a lot more senior, have been around a long time, and aren’t necessarily up on the new ways of communicating our data and our research and interacting with patients and colleagues around the world. So you’re exactly right.
Darshana: Honestly, I think when you said the negative or negative comment or whatever on Twitter or something, but everything that is the data, right? Why did somebody say that or whatever? So not necessarily you’ll analyze the data, but you want the way academic institutions or whatever scholarly work we produce, it has to be communicated or conversation has to happen, right? It’s not that things keep changing. And by giving… I think the open access coming in has really made things very doable in a way. So this year, I think the last two years I’ve been doing onboarding for promotion and tenure committee.
And in my onboarding, I’ll show stuff like this because we have member come and go, and I think you really have to keep them up-to-date, which are the venue people are actually publishing. One stuff which we are ready to put out on our GFL ListServ, that scholarly blog, when somebody asks you to write a blog, can that be considered…it’s a peer reviewed blog, can it be considered towards a scholarly work? Because not everybody is asked to write a blog, right? If you have an area of expertise then you write the blog. Or like, in your case, you screen people to take, do the podcast. So is that to be considered scholarly contribution? Because if you really look at the board’s criteria, it’s communicated in whichever format. It doesn’t say it has to be written in papers.
Kim: That’s fascinating stuff.
Darshana: A lot of stuff and a lot of things to do for us faculty development lovers, I think.
Kim: So what else are you excited about, or something new or innovative innovated that you’re doing in your office or something you’d like us to think about as a community?
Darshana: So I think there are a couple of stuff which we just touched based on is just that doing this onboarding for P&T to stay interview and some more and more I meet people. We also do “Success Begins With You” series, and I think most of our programming, I love acronyms. So I’m always looking at the acronym. But most of our programs are now personalized and individualized in a community format. And we also have like a faculty learning community. So that way, I think people interact with the same interest they have. And I think what I’m excited about the new tools we have, got at our hand. So one of the programs we offer is, like, it’s the teaching certificate and research certificate or the leadership certificate, which I think every institution offer.
It was fascinating for me to see that we have on-site and online, but basically online is not online. They can go and do it. But we use the Zoom classroom and it was very refreshing for me to see that you have a young mother with a child but actually logging in to be in the Zoom classroom. I take pictures of that and I think that is so fascinating because you can…time is always an issue. So people with little kids, you can have them come after work. Before work, they’re already tied up. I think the excitement for us to manage this talent but meet people where they are, not necessarily professional challenge, but even in the…how can you fit in all this and people get excited to attend. So one, I think, I feel that there’s so much to be done in this area and use these tools which are available.
Kim: What is this? Can you tell us a little bit, just a little bit more about that “Success Begins With You”? You said it’s personalized or individualized. I was just curious what that is.
Darshana: So as I told you for our onboarding, we generally have, of course, our CFO personally meet one-on-one to the faculty, and the new faculty, I meet them too. But then what we…and then we have two orientation, which is like an orientation style, fixed time. And we have all our leadership come in and we have a package. We go through promotion tenure. They also get a USB and all that standard what everybody else is doing. Then we offer four session in fall and four session in spring, and I offer them and then also my P&T chair come in. And basically we offer not only promotion and tenure but also work-life balance. The message we are trying to get that, that faculty development we can offer as much as we can, but you have to be ready to take it.
So we offer different venue where we actually interact with people so we know what else we could do better for them. So I think I could probably send you the success series, which we have created for new faculty and that is an opportunity for them to meet people from other departments because I think more and more…technology is great. So you can do a lot of stuff online and you think you’ll save time but human need another human to interact. And doing faculty development in the learning community sometimes, say, someone, if I’m a new faculty and you’ve been here for a while and you’ve also gone through very successfully, raise kids and things like that, then if I get all teary about what to do at home, I don’t have to really feel that you can talk to somebody. It doesn’t have to be from your department.
So I think the Success series offers that kind of a platform which people can interact. And I think you don’t want to go completely online because then you really need to have that human touch there. Another program which we offer is, actually, I call it ACE, which is Academic Citizenship point. And basically, this program is…and I’m actually going to pull out my website because a lot of these we’ve put down, you know, I don’t know whether you guys offer a lot of… Does your office buy a lot of webinars and things like that?
Kim: No. We don’t buy.
Darshana: So we buy a lot of stuff like that. And one of the stuff I think which I’m always fond off is IMC, International Medical Science Educator. And they offer a lot of things related to teaching, education, and then the basic science folks are involved in that. And I think our basic science colleagues, they’re also very busy researcher. So the teachings things, whatever is offered, they are actually webcast. So what we do under ACE, all these are archived. We purchase it, so you can actually go on and listen to it in real time and take part of it. So we have an institutional subscription. Or you can go ahead and visit them at your own pace. But what we do as a PhD, they don’t get CME credit. But anybody, not necessarily, only the PhDs. But we call it Academic Citizenship point or ACE program. So you can watch this and there is a little form and they basically get some brownie points.
So we have it like silver, bronze, and gold certificate after they finish. So we run through that. We also have on that website like MBME, writing multiple choice module, those kind of things, introductory tutorials. So you can do it at your own pace. And if you do 45 minutes to an hour session, then you get this ACE point. We have an institution or universities purchase learning with Lynda. That is the online faculty development. So I have curated some of the module related to our medical school faculty. So these are the bunch of stuff under ACE program. We also have implicit bias test which Harvard runs it and that is basically…I work with diversity office and people who take that, the next is to invite them and have a conversation. But basically ACE program offers, you don’t have to do it. But if you do it, it will be good for you. And I think, again, we work with talented people, I think rewarding them some sort of an incentive is good. So we give out certificate for participating.
Kim: So once they get all these points, do the faculty…can they translate those points into some end game? I mean, do they get credit at an annual review or does that turn into…?
Darshana: So we have…so in the past whenever we have a faculty award, if somebody got…if you got silver, bronze, I don’t think it’s much, but the gold Award, we have recognized them on a larger platform. So our program is just basically, we have an annual faculty awards. And I think the 50 ACE points is a certificate of excellence, the Gold Award, and 25 is silver, and 10 is bronze. But this is open to all, to recognize people who’ve got the gold certificate of excellence on the platform. It’s a reward of recognition.
Kim: So you mentioned a couple things and I’ll get them wrong, but I want people to be able to go to your website or be able to find these. You’ve mentioned learning with Lynda and an internet medical science educator webinars that people can buy. Can they find these things on your website?
Darshana: Absolutely. We have Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. And then on the top tab, it’s faculty staff, and our office is listed faculty advancement. And if you click on that, then you have it all.
Kim: Wonderful. That’s wonderful. This is great, Darshana.
Darshana: It’s so nice to talk to you.
Kim: Yeah. This was super informative as always. You always have so much to share and you’re clearly enthusiastic about these topics. And I just think your journal, the “Marshall Journal of Medicine” has been a tremendous win for the community, for rural medicine, and it’s going to have a lasting impact not only on patients but on learners and trainees in the future. So well job well done.
Darshana: Thank you so much.
Kim: Thank you for joining us. That was Dr. Darshana Shah.
Darshana: Thank you.